Category Archives: return to work

The following is directed towards all those engaged in medical travel and have been following my blog for some time. Sorry I haven’t been writing in a while. I either did not see anything to write about, or just wasn’t in the mood.

But the article below should be of extreme interest to all of you who deal with post-acute care and after care, even though you are not involved as of yet in workers’ comp.

As the original focus of the blog was transforming workers’ comp, this should be read by those of you who have followed my ideas on the subject. Let me know what you think.

NCCI, for those of you not familiar with them, is the organization responsible for collecting and distributing data about the American workers’ comp industry, what is driving the costs of comp, and of claims, and other financial data relevant to the industry’s function.

When Michael confronts Connie and Neri in the kitchen of his townhouse, he warns them to never give an order to kill someone again (in this case, it was Joey Zaza), and goes on to state that when he thought he had left the mob lifestyle, they pull him back.

As I reported last time, a bill in Arkansas, Senate Bill 653, pending in that state’s legislature’s Insurance & Commerce Committee since the beginning of March, proposes an alternative to the state system.

Ms. Beckman quotes Fred C. Bosse (not Fred C. Dobbs), the southwest region vice president of the American Insurance Association (AIA), who said that the bill is an attempt to keep the workers comp opt-out conversation going.

Mr. Bosse said that the AIA takes these bills seriously (good for them) and engages legislators to dissuade progress of such legislation the AIA believes could create an unequal benefit system for employees. (They haven’t drunk the Kool-Aid either)

Arkansas’ bill is the only legislation currently under consideration, but a state Rep in Florida, Cord Byrd (there’s a name for you), a Republican (it figures) from Jacksonville Beach, promoted legislation last year, but never filed it.

South Carolina and Tennessee, where bills were previously introduced within the past two years has gone nowhere.

And once again ARAWC rears its ugly head. For those of you unfamiliar with ARAWC, or the Association for Responsible Alternatives to Workers’ Compensation, it is a right-wing lobbying and legislation writing group based in Reston, Virginia. (see several other posts on ARAWC on this blog)

A statement ARAWC sent to BI said that these bills are beginning to pop up organically to model benefits that companies have seen from Texas’ non-subscription model. (Organically? That’s like saying mushroom clouds organically popped up over Hiroshima and Nagasaki)

Here’s a laugh for you, straight from the ARAWC statement:

“Outcomes and benefits for injured workers have improved, employers are more competitive when costs are contained and taxpayers are well served by market-driven solutions,” They further said, “We recognize that each state is different and that the discussions at the state level will involve varied opinions.”

Of course, we cannot really know if injured workers are benefitting, or just being denied their rights, and it seems that opt-out is only to help employers and taxpayers get out of their responsibility to those who sustain serious injuries while employed.

In another post, the notion that Texas’ system could serve as a model for other states was outlined in a report by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (don’t you just love the names of these reactionary groups?)

Bill Minick, president of PartnerSource, praised the report, according to Ms. Beckman, and said that competition has driven down insurance premium rates and improved benefits for Texas workers. (That’s what he says, but is any of it true, I wonder? I doubt it.)

ARAWC has listed a laundry list of benefits they say responsible alternative comp laws could provide:

Better wage replacement

Reduced overall employer costs

Faster return to work

Fewer claims disputes (yeah, because they would be denied)

Faster claim payouts

Faster closure (well, when you deny claims, they can be closed faster, duh!)

It is good to know that the AIA is critical of the report, and that in their opinion, it is unworkable to allow employers to adopt a separate, but unequal system of employee benefits.

And as we have seen with the defeat of the AHCA, leaving a government-sponsored program up to market-driven forces is a recipe for disaster that should not be repeated in workers’ comp, no matter what flavor the Kool-Aid comes in.

Fellow blogger, Joe Paduda, today wrote a very prescient article about the impact the jobless economy will have on workers’ comp in the coming decades.

While the idea of driverless trucks may be something in the works, there are many factors working against it from becoming reality in the near term, and perhaps for many years to come. Laws and insurance requirements and what to do if the truck breaks down on a stretch of highway not easily accessible by repair trucks or miles from the nearest truck stop, will have to considered before driverless trucks put drivers out of work.

Yet, as Joe points out, manufacturing is already seeing a loss of jobs due to automation and higher productivity, which will lead to lower consumer costs, but will exact an even higher cost on the nation’s stability and will force politicians to come to grips with what to do with a permanently unemployed population, especially those in the service sector, who are being replaced, and will be replaced by automated cashiers, as well as those occupations tied to the workers’ comp industry.

If, as I reported yesterday, that 50% of all jobs will be gone by 2025, what do you do with those individuals who lose their jobs to machines and software?

It is a question that few have asked, and one that fewer have provided answers for. Also, what happens, as I also asked yesterday, if the 50% goes to 75% or higher?

The UBI is one idea floating around, but short of that, what else can we do to put permanently unemployed back into the workforce once technology makes them, in the words of that “Twilight Zone” episode, “Obsolete!”

It makes no sense, Joe states, to reform a system that won’t be around much longer. So, say goodbye to workers’ comp, say goodbye to claims adjusters, occupational therapists and physicians and nurses in same, pharmacy benefit managers, rehabilitation personnel, return to work specialists, case managers, utilization reviewers and bill reviewers, as well as underwriters and lawyers.

Staying on the topic of single payer, this time discussing its impact on workers’ comp, David De Paolo wrote an article today that describes Colorado’s Amendment 69 as a disruption of the status quo, and he points out that the tech industry has disrupted business models and industries for several decades and that the work comp industry needs to be disrupted as well.

He goes on to say that ColoradoCare (Amendment 69) is a debate and idea that is long overdue. The arguments against the idea, De Paolo writes, of a single payer system strikes him as simply entrenched interests seeking to protect their turf and business models.

Earlier this week, Workers’ Comp Insider published an article, “It’s A Colorado Rocky Mountain Low” that opposed the approval by Colorado voters this November of the amendment, using the reasons David cites in his piece, and some of the usual misleading distortions that only confuse voters on substantive issues such as this.

The issue of combining the two silos was brought up by yours truly in an earlier post, “Betting the Farm“, and as I wrote then, not an original idea of mine. Yet, by reading David’s post, and the one by LynchRyan, you get the feeling that the only reason not to combined the two is greed and protection of vested interests.

Yet, in the business world, mergers happen all the time. And while it is true that some are not approved by the Justice Department or other government agencies, most mergers do take place.

The argument about issues like return to work being the purview of insurance companies under work comp is specious at best, because if we consider two patients, both of whom injure the same body part and require the same surgery to repair that injury, one must be put in a return to work program because he is covered for his injury under work comp; the other does not because his injury is not work-related, but did cause him to miss time from work. Does that make sense? Doesn’t the second patient also need to get back to work?

It is not logical to divide injured individuals by who picks up the check. It is more logical to treat all injuries the same, and to treat all medical issues the same, no matter if they are work-related or not. Getting cancer from occupational exposure to carcinogenic chemicals is no different than getting cancer from smoking, or being genetically predisposed as in breast cancer, or other types of cancer. They both are going to be seen by an oncologist, maybe even the same one if they live in the same area.

So keeping workers’ comp and health care separate and unequal, like education and social accommodations once did to African-Americans, is not only stupid, it is wrong. ColoradoCare is one way this can be accomplished, and as David points out, “Nobody really knows how all of this will play out.”

Maybe it is time we find out.

I am willing to work with any broker, carrier, or employer interested in saving money on expensive surgeries, and to provide the best care for their injured workers or their client’s employees.

Ask me any questions you may have on how to save money on expensive surgeries under workers’ comp.

I am also looking for a partner who shares my vision of global health care for injured workers.

I am also willing to work with any health care provider, medical tourism facilitator or facility to help you take advantage of a market segment treating workers injured on the job. Workers’ compensation is going through dramatic changes, and may one day be folded into general health care. Injured workers needing surgery for compensable injuries will need to seek alternatives that provide quality medical care at lower cost to their employers. Caribbean and Latin America region preferred.

Transforming Workers’ Comp Blog is now viewed all over the world in over 250 countries and political entities. I have published nearly 300 articles, many of them re-published in newsletters and other blogs.

Quotes

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

– Muhammad Ali

“If people are not laughing at your goals, your goals are too small..”

– Azim Premji

“Those who say your dreams are ridiculous have given up on theirs.”

– Unknown

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

– Thomas Carlyle

“As the work is done for the employer, and therefore ultimately for the public, it is a bitter injustice that it should be the wage-worker himself and his wife and children who bear the whole penalty.”

– President Theodore Roosevelt, 1907

To permit every lawless capitalist, every law-defying corporation, to take any action, no matter how iniquitous, in the effort to secure an improper profit and to build up privilege, would be ruinous to the Republic and would mark the abandonment of the effort to secure in the industrial world the spirit of democratic fair dealing.

– Theodore Roosevelt, 1908

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

– John Kenneth Galbraith

“Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of their right to join the union of their choice.”

– Dwight D. Eisenhower

“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

– Thomas Jefferson

“Mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges… which are employed altogether for their benefit.”

– Andrew Jackson

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong it’s reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

– Abraham Lincoln

“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”

“Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.”

– Karl Marx

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, NOT on fighting the old, but on BUILDING the NEW.”

– Socrates

“Every man takes the limits of his field of vision for the limits of the world”

– Arthur Schopenhauer

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

– Arthur Schopenhauer

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

– Winston Churchill

“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”

– Robin Williams

“There can be no equality or opportunity if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with.”

– Woodrow Wilson

“Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.”

– John Stuart Mill

“The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States.”

– Woodrow Wilson

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health [care] is the most shocking and inhuman[e]…”